Lying Together (12 page)

REMEMBERING THE FLOWERS

‘A
nything planned for tonight?' Chris gave a little boogie with his hips and winked.

‘Not really,' said Stephen, closing his desk drawer.

‘Not even –
nudge-nudge
?' Chris gave it nose and elbow action.

Stephen gave a half-smile and reached for his coat. He always reacted badly to Chris's heavy bonhomie, even though he recognized all too well the symptoms of loneliness that lay behind it: the extended working hours, the intrusive conversations, the pathetic attempts to batten on to the details of other people's lives. Stephen had been there once himself. But that was a long time ago, and now he couldn't find it in himself to humour the bloke.

‘But flowers – you're going to give the little woman some flowers on Valentine's Day, tell me that at least.' Chris affected hand-on-heart concern.

‘That'd be telling. Anyway, I'm off now. Don't stay too late.' Stephen picked up his briefcase and quickly made his exit, knowing he had absolutely no intention of submitting to the annual flower-buying binge: trashy bouquets, even trashier sentiments. Real love, he thought, was worth more than that.

But then, rushing up from the Tube, he saw the flower stall. The sudden burst of colour was festive against the dark night, and the crowds gathered around it seemed good-humoured and eager. Stephen felt a sudden impulse of generalized goodwill and togetherness with humanity. He glanced at his watch. He had a window: five minutes. He craned over the jostling heads, picked a bunch more or less at random (roses, lilies, something feathery, marked £7.99) and waved it at the stall-holder, who seemed to be working out some sort of complex mathematical equation with someone else's change. ‘Excuse me!' he called out. ‘Can you take for this now, mate? Train to catch!' But the man carried on with his counting, immune to the cone of Cellophane flapping inches from his nose. Stephen glanced at his watch again. He had four minutes now; four minutes to get to the platform and into the carriage. He wondered if a tatty bunch of flowers was worth the trouble. Even as he hesitated, he was aware of a pair of female eyes looking at him from somewhere in the maelstrom of bobbing heads and flailing hands. It was a momentary glance, but there was something about it that made him feel bizarrely unsettled, queasy even – as if he had been caught out in a shameful act. He was so disconcerted he almost put the flowers back, but the stall-holder chose that moment to turn to him, and Stephen, in a reflex action, thrust ten pounds into the man's hand. ‘Cheers,' he said. ‘Keep the change.'

He started to run towards the main-line platform, hampered by the strangely sail-like quality of the bouquet. As he joined the thickening surge of commuters streaming towards the barrier, he felt a slight tug at his coat. He turned sharply and saw a small, discoloured hand gripping his sleeve. He had a quick impression of a woman with unkempt dark hair, wearing a threadbare black coat. She must be one of the Kosovans or Romanians who hung around the station entrance; someone who'd seen him with his romantic bouquet and thought he was a soft touch. He tried to pull his coat free from her fingers. ‘Sorry, love,' he said, pressing on. ‘No change!' But the woman hung on, keeping pace with him so that he stopped and turned in exasperation: ‘For God's sake, I said, no change!'

That was when their eyes met. When he realized with a start that she was the woman he'd glimpsed at the stall; the one who had caused him that moment of uncertainty and unease. Up close, her face was worn and dirty and her hair was incredibly hacked-about. She was altogether squalid, but he felt again the same confusing, gut-churning sensation that he'd experienced before – and it was much more powerful now she was next to him. She had almost an inviting look, a look that might have been seductive in different circumstances – and even then, on the busy station concourse, gave him a slight frisson. He wanted to smile at her, to engage with her in some way but his rational self took over and he turned away, brusquely. ‘Sorry,' he said over his shoulder. ‘Try someone else.'

But the woman put her hand on his arm, pulled him back: ‘You don't recognize me, do you, Stephen?' He turned, shocked at hearing his name, and even more shocked by the quality of the voice. It was educated and well-produced; totally at odds with the woman's appearance. In fact, it was eerily familiar, like some television voice-over that he couldn't place. He felt the blood come to his cheeks: he must know this woman. His brain rapidly indexed anyone who might fill the bill: mothers of his children's friends, distant neighbours, occasional babysitters, school friends of his wife – but no connection would come. Absolutely nobody he knew looked that down and out.

‘I'm awfully sorry. You are …?' he said, conscious of the crowd rushing past to the train as he stood there in polite suspension, waiting for her to enlighten him. The seats would soon be full, and he'd have to stand the whole way. ‘Look, I don't mean to be rude but I'm in danger of missing my train. Are you …' He indicated the platform. After all, unlikely though it might seem, she probably lived in Essex, too.

The woman shook her head. And then she smiled. It was a smile of astonishing openness, a smile that transformed her whole face. In the whole of his life, he'd only ever known one smile like that. ‘Morella?' he said, peering at her with amazed disbelief, his heart thudding like a die-stamp. ‘
Morella?
'

Morella Martin had been the love of his life, although he hadn't seen her for fifteen years, not since they were at Cambridge together and she had inexplicably gone off without a word the night after their final exams. He'd been devastated. He'd also been determined to find her again. He didn't think it would be long before he saw her name in lights and he could surprise her at the stage door with flowers. And even if she didn't make the grade as an actress, he was convinced that one day they were bound to jump into the same taxi, or dive out of the rain into the same damp doorway, laughing:
Oh, it's you!
For an entire year he'd haunted every theatre bar in the West End, imagining that at any moment she would creep up behind him, her breath tickling his ear (
Hello, sweetie! Are you actually enjoying this crap?).
And whenever he was at a restaurant alone (and he was usually alone), he would keep half an eye on the door, thinking how envious all the diners would be when she hailed him across the room and came to sit at his table (
Stephen darling, how wonderful to see you – I've just come back from LA!
). But in reality Morella had never appeared in any of his lovingly crafted scenarios. And Stephen had found himself on a personal treadmill of dull work and routine promotion that he seemed powerless to get off. He stopped going to the theatre, stopped going anywhere, in fact. He worked late every night instead, and had no sex-life worth speaking of. Women found him self-pitying and self-absorbed, and didn't stay around. He'd gradually resorted to drowning his sorrows in the proverbial fashion, and had become a late-night bar-propper and a bore. That is, until Sue had come along and rescued him. Sue was patient, kind, and full of good sense, and had made him unexpectedly happy. They'd been married thirteen years now, had two children and he considered himself in every way a reformed and settled man. But he still carried in his head the sacred image of Morella – the entrancing, fawn-like creature of his undergraduate days.

Stephen looked at the stained and grubby woman before him, trying to disguise his feelings of shock. Something awful must have happened to her. Some illness, some terrible accident. The scene was so like a nightmare that he genuinely thought he might be hallucinating. But he could feel the reality of the crowds surging round him as he stood holding a bouquet towards Morella in a parody of a lovers' meeting. He opened his mouth and shut it again. Morella made a wry face: ‘Yes I know, Stephen. I've changed.'

‘No, no, not at all,' he said automatically. Then, more truthfully, ‘Well, that is to say, it's fifteen years. We both have.'

‘But some of us more than others. You really didn't recognize me, did you, Stephen?'

He tried desperately to discern the features that had once so enraptured him: the clear eyes with their startling dark-rimmed irises, the high cheek-bones, the delectable, mobile mouth. Everything was essentially there – but everything was washed-out, faded, fallen. She looked a good ten years older than his wife. But she was still Morella. His heart was beating overtime. ‘I knew there was some special connection – the minute you caught my eye,' he said, raising his voice over the noise of the station announcer. ‘But I was too busy thinking of these damn flowers, and catching the blasted train.' He gestured towards the platforms, the surge of people that was almost pushing them off their feet. He held the bouquet of flowers aloft to avoid the crush. ‘And I didn't expect – well, not
you
of all people, not after all this time. It's fantastic, of course,' he added hastily, wishing he had an arm free to embrace her. ‘Really fantastic.' But somewhere at the back of his mind he was astonished to find that he was still thinking of his train, his need to get home, to present Sue with the flowers, this tawdry sign of his love and devotion. But even as his mind hovered over the thought, he wondered how he could even contemplate anything so commonplace, when here in front of him, at last, was Morella. And in the manner of a fairy story, the more he looked at her, the less shabby she became. And her face – the way her eyelids slanted curiously at the outward edge, the way her bottom lip quivered gently as she spoke – began to work its old magic.

‘I don't want to make you late, of course. Especially on such a
special night
.' She eyed the bouquet. ‘But I can't let you go now. Not after all this time. I need to speak to you, Stephen.'

That trick of hers, the way she always used his name repeatedly as if he were special to her, made his heart beat even faster. But he found himself casting a regretful glance towards the platform, and even more unbelievably, to his watch. She picked up the gesture. ‘I could come on the train with you, Stephen, if you can't spare the time.'

He almost laughed. The idea was impossible; Morella on the train to Essex, crushed up with all the commuters; Morella walking up the neatly bricked drive to meet Sue in her striped cook's apron; the table laid neatly for two, Bach or Mozart in the background. ‘Let's find a pub or something,' he said, squeezing her arm. ‘Much more fun.'

She leant into him confidingly, a gesture that had always, quite wrongly, given him hope. ‘I hope you have plenty of money, Stephen. I need a serious,
serious
drink.'

‘Do you, indeed?' He laughed, relaxed a little. ‘Well, I think I can manage a round or two. Unless you're planning on vintage champagne.' Then remembering that champagne was exactly what she'd always liked. Cheap stuff of course, in those days. But in generous quantities, drunk from tumblers:
It makes me happy
.

‘That's good, Stephen. That's wonderful.' Her voice was fervent. ‘But I have to collect my belongings first. Don't go, will you? I'm so afraid you'll disappear. Like the Fairy Godmother –
poof
– in a cloud of smoke.' She gestured two arcs with her hands, looking more gamine than ever. Her features were more in focus, now. More like his long-ago memory of her. He felt he was salvaging her slowly, bringing her up out of the forgotten deep. The rush of sick pleasure almost choked him.

He wondered what belongings she had, why she had left them behind, unattended in the rush hour. They waded back against the buffeting tide of commuters, Stephen still holding the flowers aloft. Morella made her way to a plastic carrier sagging on the floor near the Tube entrance. It was a cheap yellow bag, crammed so full that the handles wouldn't meet. Not shopping, Stephen sensed. Nothing smart or elegant – Dolce & Gabbana or Harvey Nichols. More the sort of thing bag ladies carried about; intimate belongings indiscriminately thrust together. He watched, shocked, as Morella tucked back something pastel and grubby before hoisting the bag a few inches from the ground, her bony body diagonal with the weight.

‘Here – let me take that –' An automatic gesture, but as he took it, the weight surprised him, and the contents clanked a little as he let it graze the ground. ‘My God, Morella, what have you
got
in here?'

‘My life, Stephen, more or less.' She looked away quickly, then back, eyes bright, shaking a little, he noticed. ‘Sorry to ask,' she said with one of her apologetic smiles, ‘but I don't suppose you have a ciggie?'

‘Sorry –' He mimed helplessness.

‘Ah, no, of course. You never did.'

‘But let me buy you some.' He put the heavy bag and his briefcase between his knees, the slightly battered bouquet under his arm, and fished out a ten pound note from his wallet. Morella plucked it from his fingers and in a flash she was at the nearby kiosk, pointing out what she wanted, tearing open the Cellophane, lighting up urgently. She put the packet and the change into her pocket with an automatic gesture, and Stephen remembered with a jolt how she'd always done that – pocketed everything as if it were her due.

She turned, looking suddenly chic with the cigarette, like a movie star incognito, her black collar turned up jauntily: ‘That's better.' Her hands were brown with nicotine, even the nails. They looked dirty, uncared for – the hands of the beggar he'd supposed her to be. They trembled a little as she held the cigarette. She was even more nervy than he remembered.

‘Still addicted, I see.' He'd always hated her chain-smoking.
Nagged her
, she said.

‘You wouldn't begrudge me, Stephen, if you knew all that's happened.'

He watched the smoke curl upwards across her face. He thought of Sue, crisp and sweet-smelling in their smoke-free house. And he saw the kitchen clock, ticking away to suppertime; a suppertime he would not make. But this was more important. He had to know what it was that had happened to Morella. ‘Have you been ill?' he asked. It seemed the most diplomatic thing to say.